Film review: The Limehouse Golem

With: Bill Nighy, Olivia Cooke, Douglas Booth

Running time: 109mins

BILL Nighy would seem to be the perfect fit to play an ageing detective on the trail of a grisly but devious serial killer in deepest, darkest Victorian London. It’s the one role missing from a colourful CV.

But while the veteran actor steps up to the plate in suitably enjoyable fashion, The Limehouse Golem, as a whole, struggles to provide him with the material his performance deserves.

Rather, it’s a confused film that lacks the focus needed to make it a really engrossing murder-mystery in the classic Sherlock Holmes mode, or even a contemporary genre piece such as Se7en.

Nighy, contrary to what the set-up suggests, isn’t really even the film’s main focus. Instead, this is shared between him and Olivia Cooke’s young widow, Elizabeth Cree, one of the film’s many suspects.

Cree is a popular music hall comedienne who finds herself accused of murdering her controlling, possibly abusive husband (Sam Reid), and due to face trial with a view to being hanged.

Her fate becomes entwined with Nighy’s Detective Inspector Kildare, who has recently been appointed to the case of the Limehouse Golem – an elusive serial killer whose crime spree has left his predecessors baffled.

Aware that he could be being set up for a fall, Inspector Kildare narrows his search to two locations: the British Library, which seems to contain the Golem’s diary (and four suspects), as well as the music hall where Cree works. Could it be that Cree has unwittingly become caught up in the Golem’s game? Kildare thinks this possible and becomes increasingly obsessed with helping her.

Juan Carlos Medina’s film certainly boasts plenty of potential but instead of focusing purely on the crimes, or even the relationship between Kildare and Cree, opts instead to dwell for long periods on the music hall where Cree spends so much of her time and its other inhabitants, including its real-life owner Dan Leno (Douglas Booth), a shady uncle (Eddie Marsan) and a jealous acrobat (Maria Valverde).

But while this tosses even more suspects into the mix, Medina uses it more to offer insights into the life of a theatre troupe in 1880s London and thereby becomes bogged down amid the arty pretensions of several of its protagonists. Cree, herself, is an interesting character, whose troubled past is recalled in flashback, and it’s refreshing to see a film such as this benefitting from such a strong feminist streak.

But her fellow performers simply aren’t interesting enough to warrant the screen-time they get and leave you lamenting the absence of Nighy in the process, especially given the complexity of his character and the fact that he has a potentially great partner in the form of Daniel Mays’ Watson-like sidekick.

The shared storylines also create an uneven tone, with the murders often graphically violent and more often than not involving the butchering of women, which feel at odds with the somewhat more flamboyant nature of the music hall scenes. Given how feminist elements of the film are, the unpalatable violence towards other female characters feels like a backward step.

Medina – who stepped in for Neil Jordan as director – has cited Hitchcock as an inspiration but even though The Limehouse Golem does boast its own twist and plenty of red herrings, it crucially lacks the tautness of that past cinema master’s finest work. The last act also leaves more questions than answers and ultimately heightens the frustration surrounding the project and its many missed opportunities.

For Nighy, in particular (who himself stepped in for the late Alan Rickman), this feels particularly disappointing given the relish with which he portrays his Inspector Kildare. In a better movie, and one that allowed more time to develop a rapport with the always excellent Mays, we might have been talking about the possibility of a sequel or two, especially since this is undoubtedly one of the veteran actor’s best recent performances.

But perhaps the biggest mystery surrounding The Limehouse Golem is just how so many interesting elements couldn’t have combined for a more memorable movie. It’s a question that would appear to have been beyond Medina’s ability to solve.

Rob Carnevale